A Reflection Upon Perfection.

My life is like anyone else's - a day to day routine, sprinkled with some mishaps and mistakes and driven by some faraway dream, but all in all, relatively content. I'm mediocre at most things I do: I get good grades but am no genius, play piano and violin decently but am really a crappy stage performer, and participate in three seasons of varsity sports but in all likelihood will only ever play club sports in college. I like who I am and I'm proud of whatever accomplishments I've achieved thus far, but there has never been a moment in my life when I felt like I had truly succeeded in something, reached a lifelong goal, justified my existence. Albeit I'm only 17 years old, but as college rounds the corner and the Rest of My Life approaches, I suddenly feel as if I might fear...success.

This morning at piano lessons I was playing a Sonata that I honestly don't like at all. Being that I find the piece rather boring, I obviously don't practice it much, and consequently always play it badly at piano lessons. It's become sort of like a weekly thing. At every lesson, I'll play every other piece fine and then once I get to this piece my brain shuts down, I'm not into it, I make mistakes left and right, my piano teacher yells at me. But this morning for some reason I played this piece really well. It's eight pages long, but it wasn't until around page four that I realized this was the best I've ever played the piece before. It was the longest I had ever gotten through the piece without Mrs. Goldsmith stopping me and making me replay something I messed up. But once I realized this - I began messing up.

I hate perfection. It's so flawless, so pure, so like a beautiful slate of crystalline glass that could be shattered at any moment. I want to succeed, I want to be perfect, but at same time I'm afraid that perfection is too much to live with. It's hard making your way to the top, but once you're the best, it's even harder staying the best. Is it worth the price?

I feel like I'm just making excuses for myself, pretending to be reluctant to reach success when in reality I'm just afraid I won't get there.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost.

Being the nerds that we are, Jess, Melissa, Alex, and I were talking about colleges in Spanish Lit today. We were supposed to be answering questions on Rosario Castellanos' poem "Autorretrato," but we all already did them at home (again, we're nerds) so we spent all of Spanish class chatting in English.

Anyways, I was talking to Alex about how he already knew exactly what college he was EDing, why he loved that college so much, and what he planned on studying there. I told him that I admired how he had his goals set out for him and knew what he needed to do to achieve them. I, on the other hand, fear that I will never reach my dreams -- mainly because I don't know what those dreams are yet. I feel like it's so much easier to be successful when you already know what you want. So what do the rest of us do? Close our eyes, make a wish, and hope a shooting star happens to be passing by?

Shirley gave me a bookmark today. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside because she didn't buy it for any other reason than, "It reminded me of you." Funny how the smallest gestures mean the most. Anyways, the bookmark had a Henry David Thoreau quote on it, written in bold, capitalized, orange font: "GO CONFIDENTLY IN THE DIRECTION OF YOUR DREAMS!" It seems so simple. Here, browse around in the Dreams aisle. Pick a Future off the shelf and make your purchase at the Wish register. Quite a painless procedure -- the prices are pretty good too!

...I can't help it. The world is too big, and I'm only so little. How do you expect me to know what I want?


To be honest, I kind of want it all.

Anticipation.

I've been remiss in posting for quite a while -- not that it matters since no one reads this -- but the sudden explosion of bloggers which trusty Facebook has informed me of has inspired me to write something. (Actually, the real reason why I'm here right now is because I have absolutely no idea what my Spanish homework is asking me so naturally I figured that a little procrastination would be the responsible thing to do.)

My first reason sounded better though.

I hate the mornings when my alarm clock rings and before I've even opened my eyes, a list of reasons why not to get up has already started running through my head: Physics test first period, hard cross country practice today (and only 30% chance of precipitation, goddamnit), violin lessons at night...my toes feel warm beneath the toasty covers and head is fully immersed within my soft pillow. I think I'll just... -- then the alarm clock shrieks again.

But then there are those days when I go to sleep happy and wake up happier. Today is October 24th and I'm excited. Monday is the last hard practice of the season. Wednesday is our end-of-the-season cross country pasta party. Thursday and Friday are half days, aka hang out and have fun days. Then it's the weekend. Saturday is GMCs -- last meet of the season, last meet of my life! Then the next week is three consecutive half days then two days off with no practice after school! And by then we'll already be a week into November, which is the best month ever because it's full of random days off and everyone's happy because the holidays are coming up and the smell of cinnamon and turkey and candied apples and gravy are so tantalizingly close that you almost think you can already sniff it in the autumn air.

Now I know that today is going to suck -- I have yet to finish the aforementioned Spanish homework, after which I must tackle calc and physics and hopefully another college essay, but the anticipation of impending fun motivates me to be happy even in the midst of taking derivatives and finding integrals.

There's always Life to look forward to.

If Life Was Simple.

It would probably be boring. I guess that makes it all okay.

Roxbury.

So yesterday we had a cross country invitational at Roxbury. This place probably has the flattest course of all time, the weather was absolutely perfect, and I was in a fantastic mood because I was fully expecting to PR. As luck would have it, about half a mile into the race, the muscles around my shin began to feel really tight and weird. By the end of the first mile, I couldn't focus on anything but the pain in my shins and my strides were probably all of about two feet long. I was barely jogging. Pissed, humiliated, disappointed, the only thing I could think of doing was continue running until I see my coach, then drop out. But as I kept on running, and my shins kept on killing me, I couldn't find my effing coach so I finally just told a random official I was dropping out and stepped out of the race. And there it was: for the very first time ever since I began cross country in 8th grade, I dropped out of a race. I hated that official for a second; he looked so pitying.

I was pissed and stuff but I sure wasn't expecting that when my teammates came over to ask what was wrong I'd start bawling my eyes out like crazy...but now I come to the point of this entry. Sometimes, people can be so nice. Like a freshman who I've never even spoken to before ran off and came back carrying a bag of ice for me...and another girl went to get the coach, who I thought would yell the shit out of me and instead told me, "Don't sweat it, Brooke." And another girl kept reassuring me that it was better to drop out of a race than to make the injury worse, and another girl told me she'd yell at Mr. Talbot if he got mad at me.

So I don't know, I was an idiot and went to play Frisbee later in the day and now my shins and are just dying. Lesson learned: stop overworking your body.

More important lesson learned: you should always be nice to people because you may not realize it but you could really make someone's day so much better.

Hi.

I have this little notebook that I write random things in whenever stuff pops into my head. Every now and then, I'll flip through it and read over the little snippets of anger, of happiness, of sadness, of appreciation that I've recorded throughout the years. It's funny because I'll see something about a time when I was furious but I won't even remember what it was that I was mad about. Anyways, as I was browsing through said notebook today I saw something I wrote years ago: "I think we change ourselves because we're afraid to be changed by the world."

I don't understand. Why are people so stupid? Myself included.

Simple Stories.

So I met this guy today named Neil. He goes to NJIT and apparently has gone both skydiving and rock climbing in the past two weeks alone. Now I can't say my life is quite as exciting, but I've realized that some simple stories that pervade my daily life are all that I need. Need for what, I'm not sure - to be happy? to learn? to become a better person? Regardless, I'll share them with you.

Story 1: Today while I was on the bus weaving through the streets of Jersey City, I was staring out my window as I always do when I noticed this guy walking down the street. He was dressed in ripped jeans and a wife-beater, stringy sort of brown hair, bandanna, I suppose you know the type. Anyways, as he strutted (this is really the most accurate word for it) down the street he suddenly stopped in front of a phone booth. He then stuck his hand inside and started rummaging around every nook and cranny, searching for loose change...interesting. A bit cheap, I think. Anyways, a couple of minutes later I got off the bus and was walking towards the light-rail station. There was a woman walking really quickly a few feet in front of me and as she swung her purse over her shoulder, a really nice jeweled bracelet fell onto the sidewalk. A second later, another woman who had been walking past her at the moment picked up the bracelet and yelled out, "Miss! You dropped your bracelet!" and returned it to the first lady, who thanked her graciously. Seeing the first guy stick his hand around in the phone booth kind of made me sad, but I think the bracelet incident put my faith back into humanity.

Story 2: In the Skyscraper exhibit, there's this place where you can build cities out of foam blocks. Someone who had been there earlier had left a little skyscraper that he or she made. As a little girl and her father walked by, the little girl ran up to the skyscraper and knocked it down, spilling the blocks everywhere. The father got really angry, and I mean like red-face, lightening-in-eyes, spitting-lips angry and yelled, "Clean that up!" The girl took one look at him...and ran away. It was the oddest thing. There are a bunch of stands and glass cases and signs throughout the exhibit, and the girl just ran off and started hiding behind them and ziz-zagging through them...like kids don't normally run away from their parents like that. But it got even stranger when the father ran after her and then...caught her. I wasn't watching the whole thing carefully and I couldn't see their full bodies because a sign was in the way but from where I was and what I saw, I honestly think the dad grabbed her by the hair when he caught her. And that just really scared me. I know I sound like such a creeper but I honestly followed that dad around for the next five minutes just to make sure he wasn't some weird abusive person...nothing happened though. Not sure what to make of this story...

Story 3: So the guy I mentioned earlier, Neil, was a really chill guy and I talked to him for about an hour straight cause it was at the end of the day and not many people were in the Communication exhibit, which is where we were both assigned. Anyways, we talked about the Newport Mall, which led to the Menlo Park Mall, which led to East Brunswick, which led to his ex-girlfriend, who lives in Edison. And he told me about how they dated from since they were 15 until they were 20. And that after they broke up he didn't know how to "talk to girls" anymore because "she was all he ever knew." It made me sad...it was an enlightening conversation though.

Story 4: I went running with Jay. Here's a general gist of how it went:

Me: *makes fun of Jay about something, probably his face*

Jay: I bet you stay up late every night just thinking up comebacks to use for the perfect opportunities.

Me: Or maybe my comebacks are just so good that you would think I'd need a lot of time to come up with them!

Jay: Like that!!!

Me: STOP MAKING ME LAUGH I CAN'T RUN LIKE THIS.

So overall, uneventful but quite pleasant day.